This invention relates to a pneumatically inflatable chuck or core assembly for rotatably supporting a longitudinal roll having a hollow cylindrical core.
The invention will be illustrated in its application to supporting tissue supply rolls for web or tissue folding machines. A tissue folding machine for use with the expandable chuck of this invention is described in detail in the above-mentioned application Ser. No. 114,994, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,620, of which this application is a division, and which is incorporated herein by reference. Accordingly, the tissue folding machine will be described only briefly and partially herein and reference to U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,620 will be necessary for a complete description of the machine.
There has been developed over the years a number of tissue interfolding machines. Representative machines of this type are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,642,279 granted June 15, 1953; U.S. Pat. No. 3,285,599 granted Nov. 15, 1966, U.S. Pat. No. 3,472,504 granted Oct. 14, 1969, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,542,356, granted Nov. 24, 1970. As will be understood, consumer size boxes of tissue commmonly contain 100 or more separate sheets in short lengths cut from a long stack. The stack is assembled by bringing together a corresponding number of tissue webs from separate supply rolls. As the webs are assembled in the stack, they are interfolded by a series of folding devices to produce one or more longitudinal folds on each web. The assembled stack is cut off into convenient lengths which are then packaged in wrappers or paperboard boxes for use by the consumer.
Among the difficulties exhibited by many prior interfolding machines resulted from the core assemblies used within each supply roll to facilitate the handling of the roll and its positioning on the machine. When a given roll exhausted its supply of tissue, for example, the spent core was manually removed from the machine, and the handling assembly within the core was detached in a more or less haphazard manner. The time required to remove the core, detach the handling assembly, insert the assembly in a fresh roll and position the fresh roll on the machine was excessive and resulted in unnecessary delays in the tissue folding operation.